


as seas exhale

by Calamitatum



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Campaign 2 (Critical Role), Canon Compliant, Drowning, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mind Control, Nott is Team Mom and no one can change my mind, Swearing, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 22:28:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21962062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calamitatum/pseuds/Calamitatum
Summary: “Potential,”the snake hisses, staring from beneath murky waters.“Fuck off,” Nott says, and fires a bolt directly into Uk’otoa’s giant glowing eyeball.Or, Nott and her least favourite child bond through shared trauma.
Relationships: Fjord & Nott (Critical Role)
Comments: 50
Kudos: 232





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Howdy!
> 
> This story takes place during C2E30, within those nebulous eight days of travel to Zadash, some time after visiting Molly’s grave. The M9 is freshly level 6, and Fjord has swallowed one (1) orb, but doesn’t yet know exactly what it was. Technically, he shouldn't know Uk'otoa by name yet, but for ease of reading, let's just say he learned it at some point during one of the dreams. 
> 
> This fic is named for [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asFHFChCyr8), but takes inspiration from [this album](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVSIBCIbs9Q), either of which would make a fantastic atmospheric accompaniment to your reading experience.
> 
> Yeehaw and enjoy!

The make camp off the Amber Road. 

It pissed rain from dawn to dusk, and by the time they finally roll out their bedrolls, it’s straight into the mud-slicked grass they go. A long day of travel and a fight with a nasty pack of Ankhegs wiped Caleb of spell slots, so they’re without the hut again, out in the open in a clearing just big enough for the six of them. The grass is damp and hard, cold without hope of stoking a campfire, but Nott plants herself between Caleb and Jester like she’d rather be nowhere else on earth, waits for their murmurs to quiet and for the lull of sleep to take them over. 

It’s an hour into second watch when her eyelids finally start to feel heavy, the booze she downed on her shift settling warm and heavy. She feels herself start to drift.

A few feet away, Fjord shifts, leathers creaking. Nott tenses, listens. He breathes a long exhale, stretches, pops something in his neck. Gross.

She closes her eyes again, settles in a little closer to Caleb's familiar musk and slows her breaths to match Jester’s. 

And Fjord sighs. Ugh. He’s so _loud_ when he’s on watch _._ Bastard man.

Something at the edge of the clearing snaps.

Nott’s eyes fly open, adjust to the night. Fjord’s head snaps in the direction of the sound, air shifting as he summons his blade to hand. Neither move.

There’s a chitter, the sound of something small scampering through the underbrush, and Nott’s fingers uncurl from the shortsword she’d clutched beneath her bedroll, slowly sliding it back into its sheath. 

But Fjord remains tensed. All breath seems to leave him as he stares into the woods, unnaturally still. Nott frowns, watches through lowered lashes from where she lies, a mix of annoyance and curiosity, when without warning, he lurches to his feet.

What the fuck.

He steps clean over them, nearly crushing her ear, and straight onward into the dark. She twists around, away from Caleb’s warmth, and watches him go. 

“Fjord,” she whispers. “Fjord!”

Nothing. Into the woods he goes, disappearing from sight a moment later. She can still hear him though, crashing through the underbrush with all the stealth of a toddler. She untwists from her blanket and rolls to her feet, peering after him. Probably just going for a piss, right?

Right?

“Caleb.” She nudges the sleeping man, and again when there’s no response, before she finally pulls her eyes away from Fjord. Caleb breathes deep and slow, pallid in the moonlight, the shadows deep beneath his eyes. His arm’s been flung out from the dirty cloths of his bedroll, fingertips just barely resting against Beauregard’s shoulder. On Nott’s other side, Jester murmurs in her dreams. Beyond her lies Caduceus, still strange and foreign and far, _far_ too tall to yet truly be considered the family that the others have somehow bumbled their way into. There’s a space beside him where Yasha should be, where _Molly_ should be, and Nott’s chest aches dull and hollow at that.

She glances back to the woods.

Fjord’s such a fucking idiot. 

Nott’s pack is overturned on grass just past Caleb’s head. She hovers over it, between her flask and her crossbow, then, mournfully, grabs the latter. Single bolt, already loaded. Just in case.

With a final sigh, she treads lightly after Fjord. Yeah, just in case.

The path of crushed underbrush is easy enough to follow, clawed feet swift and silent, and it only takes a moment to find him. The silhouette he cuts is strange under the piecemeal of his leathers, their shadows bulky and long. She follows at a distance, but he shows no sign of stopping.

“Fjord,” she whisper-shouts. “What the fuck?”

He pauses, swaying like a flag in the breeze, and a hand comes up to rest against a tree, leaning heavily, like it pains him, before he pushes off and continues his stumble forward. And it’s _wrong,_ the gait, the laboured breathing, she can see now, clearly. He nearly looks drunk. Sleep-walking?

She closes the distance between them, closes a hand around his arm, and barely feels the flex of muscle before a frigid spray of salty water betrays the falchion swinging full-force at her head.

She shrieks and ducks back, catches a flash of yellow light like a torch in the dark as the blade sails over her head. “What the fuck what the fuck?” she screams, and lets loose the bow.

The dull _thud_ of the bolt connecting with a tree hardly permeates the thunder of her pulse, but there’s no second attack coming. Fjord spins back around and continues on like nothing’s happened, falchion loose at his side, the tip grazing the low ferns, as though he didn’t just barely dodge the bolt shot at his face. And she sees now, the yellow glow is coming from him.

From his _stomach._

“Oh-hoho- _oh_ no. Fuck no.”

It pulses from beneath his skin, soft and murky, as though from below a great depth, light rippling in waves. Fjord sways again and the light grows brighter.

“Ah, I fucking knew it. Oh, I fucking knew, you evil bastard,” she spits, and races to the tree. She has to jump to reach the bolt, yanks it out and reloads in the same breath. The tip’s fucked, metal split and bent back, but she doesn’t need to be accurate from ten feet.

“Fjord!” she shouts, as loud as the panic in her chest. “Fjord, I swear I will fucking kill you right now if you don’t snap out of it!” She levels the shot at the back of his slowly retreating head, and prays the others can hear her. Gods, how’s she going to explain this to Jester? “Last chance, dickhead!” she says, throat tight, and she doesn’t know if it’s the threat or the desperation of it, but by some miracle, he _listens._

He stops. Turns. Blank eyes pass clean through her.

And then vanish entirely.

In a single breath, he goes down, collapsing backwards out of sight. Nott shouts and darts forward, and nearly takes the same fall, feet slipping on wet rock. The bank of a river, the roar of white water previously masked by the staticky panic of her own racing heart. Her eyes dart across the water’s surface, chest cold and laced with the ice of terror.

“Fjord! Fjord, oh gods, oh shit, oh fucking fuck fuck.” She glances back, but the night is still and dark over her shoulder. Where the fuck are the others? Back to the river, and _shit,_ there he is, a dark shadow under the surface, lit from beneath in sickly yellow. She watches, counts. Ten seconds, twenty seconds, and _nothing._ Unmoving. Unbreathing. Dead man’s float, and gods, he really is a dead man, isn’t he, he’s really just going to fucking die, just fucking drown right in front of her, just like she did, just like that.

“You piece of shit,” she growls. “I don’t even like you.”

The water’s a frigid roar as she wades in, vicious and graceless, toes digging in sand and loose rock for purchase. The current makes grabs for her legs, her hips, her fucking _chest,_ as she wades deeper and deeper, jaw high and clenched around an ungodly shriek. 

Her toes lift the final few steps, kicking out desperately, hands scrabbling for purchase as she finally, _finally,_ reaches him. Waterlogged leathers make a dead weight of him, the current’s vicious as it drags them inexorably along, but she clenches fists around him and _hefts,_ sinks her own head beneath waves of terror and nightmare memories to lift his. It’s not enough, and she rises, barely manages to suck down a single gulp of air before she plunges below to try again. 

Beneath the water, eyes open. Meet hers, awake with a terrible clarity. Yellow and distorted, warped in sickly light. He moves at last with his own power, plants feet against the sand and cold fingers around her throat, holding her still against the onslaught of the current, for a moment, she thinks, to lift her from it.

Only then, he smiles.

Oh, she thinks.

Caleb. Yeza. Luc.

And for the second time in her life, Nott drowns.

It’s no less terrifying this time around, the cold press of the water weighing her down, the hands around her throat, whiting out thought, like a nerve exposed to nothing but a singular, terrible pain, a panic so great it consumes all else as she screams, and screams, and _screams,_ and feels the river flood her lungs. The hands tighten as though to hold it in, tighten again as her fists beat against him, vision spotting red and black, and she thinks if the fates have any mercy, any at all, maybe this time, she’ll just fucking stay dead.

* * *

No such luck, as it turns out.

When Nott wakes, Fjord is leaning over her. She coughs and coughs and spits watery mucus, just enough breath in her lungs to aim it right in his eye.

Then she punches him in the fucking teeth.

He goes down like he isn’t even trying, mouth bruised and lips pale with cold, so she punches him again and again, then unsheathes her sword and rears back to plunge it into his neck, and he really isn’t trying, really isn’t doing anything at all but lying there, and she can see that bruised-pale mouth moving now, jabbering words like _please_ and _sorry_ and _you’re okay Nott I swear you’re okay_ and what even _is_ that accent?

She crawls off his chest but doesn’t drop the blade, watches with narrowed eyes as he rises to his knees. “Hands up,” she barks, and doesn’t miss the way they tremble so bad he nearly falls. If it’s supposed to make her feel bad, it really doesn’t.

It’s another few minutes of coughing and hacking--gods, did it hurt this much last time?--before she’s able to produce any more words. Fjord, politely, doesn't move. Nott, not buying it, keeps the sword aloft. Her most pressing questions include, _What the fuck just happened?_ and, _Where am I?_ and, _Who are you really, you dirty fucking liar?_ but her lips feel warm and taste strangely of salt, so what comes out first is, “Did you give me mouth-to-mouth?”

Fjord’s mouth snaps shut around another blubbering apology, throat working until he forces out, “Yes.”

“Disgusting!” She spits in the grass. “And why the fuck do you sound like that?”

His eyes go wide, dart left and right, and, “I don’t-- Uh, I’m not-- It just... slips out. Sometimes.” He’s back to his usual cadence by the end of the sentence

Nott scowls but allows it. More importantly, “Show me your stomach.”

He hesitates, then slowly peels off his leathers. Underneath is smooth green, the faint ridges of tensed muscle. He’s _flexing_ , the egotistical bastard. She inches forward, snaps, “Knock it off, dickhead,” and pokes the skin with the edge of her blade. Pokes it harder, testing. Not quite enough to draw blood. Yet. Her eyes flicker to his face, where he’s watching her, hands raised in complete surrender. She almost edges it in another inch, but finally pulls back. “Fine.”

“Nott,” he pleads. “I swear I didn’t-- I mean, I did, but-- It wasn’t me.”

Blank eyes. Yellowed and dead. “Yeah,” she concedes. “I know.”

“He-- Uk’otoa. He wanted me to go in the water.”

“Clearly. Why?” Her eyes cast about the rocky shore where they’ve found themselves. The river’s shallower here, spilling wide around a bend. She tracks the drags in the sand where Fjord must have wrenched her body up the shore. 

“He said to-- find. Consume.” 

Her eyes drift further, to a rock pool some fifty feet downshore, where a familiar curve of wood floats, barely visible in the rolling fog. She starts towards it, shouting over her shoulder, “Couldn’t be bothered to give any more specific instructions? What did he expect you to do, drink the whole river?” Drink. Gods. She misses her flask. 

“I don’t know,” comes the response, quiet, thoughtful. “I think he wanted me to find something on the other side.”

She clambers up onto the rocks, dodging the lapping shore until she reaches the pool. The bow’s wedged against a rock, the wood of the stock scraped down one side and splintered to hell, but she wrenches it free, and miraculously, finds the bolt’s still loaded.

“Helpful,” she drawls. “Real helpful. Was there a clause anywhere in those oh-so-detailed directions about killing your friend while you were at it?” She turns around, and is surprised to find he’s right there, having followed her all the way up onto the rocks. Like a lost fucking puppy. She’s just in time to watch the words sink in too, to watch them hurt.

“Nott,” he says. “Gods, I’m so--”

“Yuck. Save it. If I’m not getting an apology from the big squid upstairs himself, I don’t want to hear it.”

He makes a little face, a concession, a thanks. _No hard feelings,_ she thinks, apropos of nothing, remembering the way Luc had sniffled and wept after he’d accidently knocked over one of Yeza’s vials. _When someone makes a mistake, and they apologize, we say ‘no hard feelings.’_ She’d looked to Yeza, eyebrows pitched, and he’d quickly nodded. _Mom’s right, kiddo. No hard feelings._

 _I forgive you_ was always too hard. Too formal.

“Yeah, so anyway,” she huffs. “We should get back to the others.”

* * *

They walk upstream, careful to avoid the shoreline. The river narrows and deepens, and as Nott’s eyes adjust to the hazy light of almost-dawn, the other side takes shape under a blanket of mist. The forest comes alive with chittering birds and rodents that scurry from fern to fern too quick to be seen. Twigs crunch beneath Fjord’s heavy, waterlogged footfalls. Nott’s fucking _barefoot,_ which though it reminds her of the rabid goblins she used to see hovering at the edges of her clan, at least lends itelf to some degree of stealth. If there’s one thing those knobby goblin feet are good for, it’s braving the wilds. She dries her shortsword on passing greenery and prays it doesn’t rust, hefts her crossbow high and tenses at every breeze that dares so much as wheeze in their direction. Fjord stays close, for once in his idiot life, eyes wandering and watchful, but doesn’t summon the sword.

Good.

A few hundred yards upstream, Nott slows, and carefully makes her way to the edge of the riverbank, peering across. That mist has really settled in thick, murky early-morning sun cutting through it with dim swathes of light, glittering off the flecks of white water that thrash from the rocks piercing the surface. “How far downstream did we go?”

“I’m not sure,” Fjord admits, and Nott feels more than hears him approach, coming to stand at her shoulder as he too peers through the fog. There’s a careful tension to the posture, leaning purposefully away, and Nott slowly loosens the grip that had flown instinctively to the hilt of her sword.

His eyes flicker to the movement. He breathes. Takes another step back.

_No hard feelings._

“Let’s keep moving,” she says. This wasn’t where they fell. 

* * *

“Okay, new strategy,” she breathes, a little raggedly, when almost half a mile later, not a damn thing looks familiar. She heaves a breath, and bellows, “Caaaaaleb!” Her voice bounces over the surface, swallowed by the rush of white water. She tries again. “Caleb! Jester!”

“Nott! What the fuck--”

A hand slaps her cheek, narrowly missing her mouth, and she slaps him right back, still shrieking, “We’re over here!”

Hands around her shoulders now, shaking her. “Would you _stop?_ ” 

“What? At least I’m doing something!”

“Yeah, announcing our presence to the whole damn forest.”

“And them, too! We didn’t camp _that_ far from the river. Maybe they can still hear us.”

“We-- What?”

“What what?” And then, because fuck him, she casts _Message_. “Caleb! It’s me! Where are you? I’m stuck with fucking _Fjord_ of all people and I need your help. Youcanreplytothismessage.” She knows before the spell’s even over it didn’t send. Out of range, then. Fine, they can do this the old fashioned way. She heaves in a deep breath, prepared to scream again.

“Nott.” A hand comes down hard on her shoulder, spinning her, and another lands over her mouth, successfully this time. She thinks about biting down.

“What did you say about camp?” he demands, voice all low like when he tries to sound serious.

She licks a stripe up the inside of his hand, revels in the flash of disgust as he pulls away to wipe it. “What? You remember where we camped?”

He nods, but still looks confused.

“I only followed you for like three seconds before you went for your little dip. It can’t have been that far.” She frowns, assessing. “Don’t tell me your memory’s gone all weird now.”

“No, no,” he shakes his head. “I remember where we camped. Nott, I picked the spot. I was reading the map today.” He levels her with a hard stare. “There was no river on that map.”

Nott blinks, long and slow, and sends a pointed look at the water coursing not ten feet away. “I mean, the evidence to the contrary is pretty strong.”

“Nott. I’m serious.” He lets go of her, finally, but the tone remains. “This wasn’t on the map. We didn’t camp by a river. The closest one was--hell, it must’ve been at least five miles out. We would have crossed it later this morning.”

"There's no way we wandered _fives miles_ away," she bristles.

Fjord shrugs helplessly. “I don’t remember that part too clearly, but… Nott, I’m telling you. This river wasn’t on the map.”

“So,” she drags the syllable out, long and slow. “You’re saying this river just… suddenly appeared. Miraculously. Magically. Calling you toward it like a siren.”

Fjord shrugs again, the eternal _stranger things have happened._

Nott looks around again. Really looks. The fog, the faint light. Strange, that. They weren’t even on Caduceus’ watch yet. Sun wasn’t due to come up for another few hours, at least. In fact, in the all the time they’ve walked, the sky hasn’t so much as changed hue. A murky sort of light drifts down from heavy cloud cover, the rolling fog heavy on the forest floor. The very _air_ is wet, thick with moisture that gathers in the hair plastered to her brow, the sweat that beads down the back of her neck.

The birds have gone silent from all her shouting. The underbrush is eerily still, distinctly unnatural. 

“Fuck me,” she says flatly. “I think we’re in another plane.”


	2. Chapter 2

Wherever they are, it’s creepy as shit.

It’s obvious in hindsight, now that Nott’s attuned to it--the pale watery light, the slow creeping fog, the echoing chitters and mournful birdcalls that slowly pick back up from the canopy. The whole thing screams _wrong._ She hates to think it, but Fjord was right. She shouldn’t have done all that shouting. 

Fjord’s standing around all weird and useless, like he can tell she’s panicking but doesn’t want to point it out. He wrings his hands, knuckles red with welts from where she’d scratched them raw while she’d drowned. “Maybe it’s not so bad. If this is another plane, then maybe the river’s-- I dunno, the portal?”

Makes sense, but she doesn’t like that it’s coming from his mouth. “I wish Caleb were here.”

“Maybe he’s right there on the other side,” Fjord suggests, voice all high and fake. “Maybe we just can’t see him from this bank.”

She drags her claws through sopping hair. Gods, they’re gonna have to swim back, aren’t they? Nausea churns through her stomach, pulse high in her throat and tight with panic. At Fjord’s beckon, she inches back toward the river, breath as laboured as if she’d run a mile, but can’t quite bring herself to its lapping edge. Fjord watches with a rueful sort of twist to his lips, mouth opening and closing a few times before, finally, “I guess I’ll go first.”

He wades in, water rushing up to his knees, his waist, before he stops and turns back, offering a hand.

Ha. Un-fucking-likely. Nott scowls and jerks her chin. He retracts the offer, a little sheepishly, turns and wades further. The current’s stronger near the middle, and the second his feet leave the ground, he begins to drift, forcing him to begin to swim in earnest. For a heart-pounding second, his head goes under, but he reappears a moment later, legs kicking, arms moving in wide strokes, before he eventually manages to pull himself to safety on the opposite bank.

He flashes a thumbs-up. Nott flips him off in response.

She edges carefully toward the water. Dips a toe. Pulls it back out. Unloads her bow and tucks it into her belt. She’s not about to shoot herself in the ass flailing around in there.

Fjord’s watching her from the other side, face creased in something disgustingly similar to worry. He opens his mouth and she _knows_ he’s about to ask if she needs help, which she _doesn’t,_ least of all from _him,_ thank you _very_ much, so she forces herself in the first step, then another. Her feet slip on slick rock, current curling cold around her ankles. 

Terror grips her, plainly, and she lets it, for just a second. Gives herself to the count of ten to shake through it, false starts, false starts _again,_ and then, at last, plunges in.

The water crashes overhead and floods her ears with its roar. She gasps and kicks, breaches and barely manages a breath before it pulls her back down, thrashing desperately. Tears sting at her eyes as she flails, gasps again and feels the water invade her mouth, coughs and coughs and finally, finally, feels her feet connect with something solid. She digs her toes into the riverbed and works to walk against the current, feels her head breach, then her neck, then something solid and warm wraps around her chest and wrenches her the rest of the way out.

She sputters and kicks, slams her heel into Fjord’s groin. “Bastard.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he pants. “Sorry, almost there, there we go.” He deposits her on mud-slick ground and she clambers up the bank, off wet rock and onto dirt and grass, collapses back onto her ass and gasps to regain her breath. Fjord doesn’t move, still knee-deep in the water.

Shaking hands make quick work of reloading. She doesn’t point it at him, but it’s a near thing.

“Don’t fucking touch me when we’re in water.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t fucking touch me _ever._ ”

“Nott.” A hint of exasperation now. “I was trying to help.”

“Don’t,” she snaps. “You’re the reason we’re in this mess in the first place.” And okay, that was mean, hit a little too close. She lowers her gaze, gnaws her lip. “Get out of there. I don’t like you standing there.”

He does, and comes to stand at her side, a solid foot between them, but this close, she can see the hard-set of his shoulders, the careful tremor in the hands that had pulled her free of the river, that had drowned her beneath it. She breathes hard, and aims her bow at nothing, because there’s nothing to fight here, nothing to blame, and the tension’s all weird and loud-quiet, and she really _really_ wished she hadn’t said that.

“Nott,” Fjord says softly. “We should keep moving.”

* * *

They keep moving.

Back in the direction of camp, this time with Nott in the lead. She was right in her general estimate of the distance--it’s hardly a minute before they stumble out into a familiar clearing.

And find it’s fucking _empty._ No sign of life, no imprints in the grass from their bedrolls, not so much as a single scuff to mark that anything heavier than a squirrel’s ever stepped foot here. They make a careful round of it anyway, kicking through grass and peering around trees and low ferns, all to no avail. And then, as if their day didn’t already suck enough, it starts to fucking _rain._

“Well, what the fuck,” Nott says.

“I dunno.” Fjord scratches his chin in that stupid _trying-to-look-thoughtful_ thing he always does around Jester. “Not gonna lie, at first, the fog kinda made me think of the Ethereal Plane.”

“But?”

He shakes his head. “I was banking on the others still being here. I mean, I’ve only cast _Blink a_ few times, but when I’m in there, I can still see everything, you know?” He gestures around. “If that were it, we would see them. We would hear them.”

“And there would be no weird rivers.”

“No weird rivers,” he agrees.

“So--”

“...Plane of Water?” he guesses.

The world tilts and grows staticky-sharp, too-bright and too-loud in that way that makes thoughts hard to hold on to. The wet heat on her skin, the damp air in her lungs, the prickle of soggy grass beneath her feet--it all feels enormous, suddenly, cloying and nauseating, trickling through her like bugs burrowing beneath skin. Nott shudders, scrunches her eyes shut and just sort of. Sits there, for a second. Breathes, or. Tries to.

“Hypothetically,” she croaks. “Just hypothetically, assuming we really were in the Plane of Water, how would we go about getting out?” 

“Well, I think portals to and from the Elemental Planes do just, kinda, naturally exist,” Fjord muses.

“Right. Like the river.” 

“Sure. Like the river.” 

“But for some reason, that was a one-way deal.”

“To be fair,” he says slowly, “we didn’t really spend a whole lot of time… _investigating._ ”

She digs her knuckles into her eyes, like that might stop what she knows is coming next. “Should we?”

He sighs. “I mean, it’s right there. Might as well.” 

He starts up, and Nott jolts to her feet after him. Doesn’t quite clutch his pantleg, but it’s a close thing. The walk back is tense, silence still stiff and hanging with that ugly accusation. The rain seems to double down on the mood, picking up into a veritable downpour, until they’re all but swimming through it. The banks are spilling over by the time they arrive, thunderous white water that swirls in waves up over the sand and rocks. Nott gets to about ten feet, and not an inch closer.

“It’s okay,” Fjord says. “I’ll go.” 

“Damn right. I’m not going back in there.” 

He nods, steels himself, and begins the descent. Nott manages a step closer. He starts to wade in, slipping under the surface even faster than before, and cold terror crawls up her throat, as though the water were closing in around her instead. “Be--” she starts to shout, then catches herself and lowers it to a hiss, “Be fucking careful, gods.”

Fjord glances back. “I’ll be right back.” And he dives below the water. 

Another three steps before she can stop herself, toes dug like claws into the mud as she strains her neck. She can barely make him out beneath the rushing froth, a murky figure that dips and rises with the current. He comes up for air and she remembers to breathe too--holds it again when he dives back down. A full minute passes this way, the river dragging down as he struggles against it, feeling along the riverbed for any sign of whatever shithole they fell through to get here.

After what feels like an eternity, his head breaches the surface and stays there, bobbing toward the bank before at last, he pulls himself free. 

“That was stupid,” she says. “That was so fucking stupid. You don’t know what could have been in there.”

“We had to be sure,” he pants. 

“Sure of what? Your perfect breaststroke? Oh, gold medal for you, asshole.”

“Sure that there’s no way back,” he snaps, and the words ring like a blow.

“There _is_ a way back,” she says, low and razor-sharp. “Of course there’s a way back, idiot. There-- There has to be.”

There _has_ to be.

* * *

They wait out the rain under the drooping canopy of a nearby cluster of trees. Not that it helps, like, _at all._ They’re both rank with the stench of river water and soaked through from their little baths, but there’s something to be said for retaining an air of normalcy. Fjord takes off his boots and stretches out his ugly man-toes. Nott air-dries her armpits. They both meticulously pretend not to be huddling for warmth. 

She isn’t sure how much time passes. There’s no change in the light--just that same, continuous, half-dawn glow, an ever-clouded sky and low-hanging fog. Eventually, though, the rain does start to lighten up. The fog rolls back little by little, reveals a clearer view of the river. Is it just her, or is the water... calmer? It’s no longer spilling up over the banks, and not nearly as white, almost like the current’s slowed.

Beside her, Fjord’s breathing slows too, eyelids drooping and chin dipping toward his chest. She carefully extracts herself from their _definitely-not-cuddling_ cuddle, waits another second to make sure Fjord isn’t going to topple over without her support, and makes her way toward the river to investigate.

And manages about five steps before a low, gurgling rumble freezes her dead in place.

The brush _explodes,_ a frigid spray of water her only warning before something something _surges_ into her, sending her sprawling across the grass with a choked cry. She rolls, cracks her head against the ground, and lies, dazed, and hears _whatever_ it is makes another attack, slamming down against--

Fucking _shit--_

_Fjord._

Nott twists to her feet but stays low, hidden, vision still spinning but bow already in hand. It takes another second to even realize what she’s looking at--living, _breathing_ water, condescend in a single swirling mass of dark eyes and too-long limbs. It catches Fjord’s unsuspecting form in a surging wave, limbs of water like tentacles slithering over him as he coughs and sputters. 

Nott aims up the shot but _fuck,_ it’s _made_ of water, will it even matter? The hesitation is all the elemental needs--it begins to drag Fjord towards itself in earnest, regathering its mass to swallow him whole. 

_Fuck._ She drops the bow, springs forth from her hiding spot with her shortsword instead. She carves through the elemental, tastes water instead of the usual spray of blood. It groans and recoils, and Fjord tears himself free with just enough breath to shout a warning, “Nott, down!” before two beams of green light sail over her head. 

The creature _screams,_ and this time, the loss of mass is noticeable, leaking out like a breached hull. Still, there’s only two of them, and possibly more of this thing on the way. Nott tallies the odds, and figures sticking around to watch the ship sink probably isn’t the smartest move.

But Fjord, the fucking _moron,_ widens his stance, one hand clutching the sword, the other glowing with an electric green. 

“Fjord!” she shouts. “Let’s fucking _go!_ ”

It’s like he can’t even hear her. He shoots it, shoots it again, moves _closer,_ and she sees it now, that same strange, vacant look, eyes fever-bright and face split with that sickly grin that she knows, she just fucking _knows,_ isn’t his. 

The elemental rears up and slams into him, drags him back down into its murky maw and pins him beneath the waves of its body, but he doesn’t even seem to _notice._ Energy gathers in his palm as he shoots the thing from the inside out, lighting it up with an explosion of green that sparks like lightning through its watery veins. 

Nott swears and throws herself back in, viciously carving Fjord free with all the frustration as if she were stabbing into the man himself. “Asshole!” She grabs a fistfull of his sopping shirt and wrenches him back. “Are we seriously doing this _now?”_

He hits the ground and twists back around, hellbent, swoops the falchion right over Nott’s head in a blow that sends the elemental exploding in a burst nearly as vicious as its own attack. The waves knocks them both back, tumbling a tangle of limbs and blades that somehow, miraculously, doesn’t end in them both impaled. 

“Holy _shit,”_ she gasps, and then immediately rolls over to pin him in place when he makes to stand. Glowing eyes stare sightlessly up at her, that same murky yellow leaking out from lower, behind his ribs.

“Leave him _alone,_ you piece of shit,” she swears, wrenches the sword from his grasp and shunts it into the river. The second it leaves her hand, it’s back in his, and okay, she should have seen that coming. She catches his wrist before he can make another swing for her face. “Son of a bitch.”

New plan. Her free hand cracks across his cheek, then back the other way. Gods, she’s dreamed of this moment her whole life. “Snap out of it!” She punctuates each word with another slap, and honestly? Doesn’t feel as cool as she’d hoped. Maybe a backhand instead?

Fjord’otoa begins to struggle in earnest before she can test the hypothesis, bucks his hips to loosen her hold and makes another swing for her face. She rolls out of the way and onto her feet, sees him lurch to his own. But like before, there’s no second attack. Just that same, dead-eyed stare into the woods, a single-minded focus. He begins to walk, unsteady but purposeful.

“Fjord,” she says, and hates how it sounds like a plea. “Fjord, get a fucking _grip_.”

And to her astonishment, he-- does. A stutter to his step, a blink, brow creasing. Confusion, written clear, like he’s just woken up from a dream. He turns, seeing her, for the first time _actually_ seeing her, lifts a hand to brush the cheek where she hit him, and for a second, he looks impossibly young.

“Nott?”

She punches him square in the jaw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the Plane of Water exists in Campaign 1 and super duper doesn’t look like this at all, but, like, it’s a big plane, okay? Let's say Nott and Fjord conveniently happened to show up in the not-kracken-infested part.


	3. Chapter 3

Fjord makes a bunch of gross noises as he comes to consciousness. Groans and moans and the whole nine yards. Pretty dramatic. It sounds like he’s gonna _barf._

“Nott?” he says. “Wha’ happened?” And then he _does_ barf.

“Gross,” she winces, and wipes at his face with a damp fern. “At least roll over or something.”

She helps him sit up--which, okay, bad idea--and then helps him lie down again. Slaps his hand away from prodding at the purple, knuckle-shaped welt across his jaw, and scowls to cover the guilt. “Don’t touch, you’ll make it worse.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” he says. “Shit, Nott, that almost feels like one of Beau’s.”

“Stop trying to make me feel bad! You went all weird again, I had to do _something._ ”

“I’m not trying to--” he sighs, presses his fingers into his eyes. His voice trembles on the exhale. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”

Nott doesn’t answer. Just stares at the barfy fern.

“I didn’t… hurt you again, did I?”

“No!” she says, too quickly. Fjord lifts a hand, eyeing her from between the fingers. “No,” she says again. “You just-- went all weird. He makes you look like a puppet. It’s creepy.” She rubs her arms. “And for fuck’s sake, stop summoning your sword. It’s like it gives him a shortcut straight to your brain or something.”

He sighs, squints up at the sky like it’s done him a personal offense. At least it’s finally stopped _fucking_ raining. Shit, how long have they even been here? 

“If Uk’otoa brought me here,” Fjord says, and the fear in his voice is plain, “I don’t think he’s going to let me go until I do what he wants.”

“Which is?”

“I told you. He wanted me to find something. He wanted me to consume.”

“Like when you vored that ball in the swamp that one time?”

Fjord makes a face. “I mean. No. But yes.”

"You're not voring any more balls,” she says sternly. “Look how much control that first one gives him over you. What do you think's gonna happen when you've got two for those things in you?" _Gods,_ she’s never felt more like a mom. _Just because your friends vore a ball in a swamp, doesn’t mean you have to._

"It might be the only way.”

She huffs. “Well, you’re certainly not doing it _now._ Look at you, you can’t even stand. You look like a baby.”

He doesn’t even argue, just drops the hand back over his eyes, and now she _really_ feels bad. Sure, she wanted to take him down, but damn, she doesn’t want him _dead._ She gnaws at her lip, picks at damp sleeves, and finally, “Let’s just… rest up, okay?” The light still hasn’t changed, but it’s gotta be nearing nightfall in the real world. “Give it a few hours and then-- and then we’ll see, I guess.”

He agrees, even managing to help drag himself a couple yards to higher ground. It’s not much drier, but the more distance they put between themselves and that river, the better. She settles them not far from where they’d originally made camp, like they could almost pretend the others are still there, her eyes sharp for any sign of danger and wistful for the time when her biggest worry was reaching Zadash before her flask ran dry. 

It’s still muggy from the rain, air hot and humid, sweat pooling down her back to mix with the dew, but at least they’re not shivering. She keeps close anyway, tucked low in the grass, one hand around her crossbow and the other counting the pulse on Fjord’s wrist.

“Get some sleep,” she tells him. “You look like shit. I don’t wanna be lugging around your dead weight tomorrow.”

There’s a pause. A shift. Gods, he even _thinks_ loud.

“Nott. What if I--”

“I won’t let you run off.” Her grip tightens around his wrist, half-promise, half-threat. “I won’t.”

“...What if I hurt you again?”

She sits up. Gives him a long, hard look. “Want me to tie you down with vines?”

He scowls. “This isn’t a joke.”

“Yeah. Do I _look_ like I’m kidding?”

* * *

She really isn’t.

Fjord waits while she gathers thick, ropey vines, tearing them down off the drooping trees from which they dangle. It’s not exactly your classic fifty feet of hemp rope, but it’s better than nothing, and by the time she drags it all back over, she’s got enough of the stuff to at the very least slow him down. 

“You’re not serious,” he groans, when she stumbles back into the clearing under at least twenty pounds of foliage.

“Deadly,” she grins, and gets to work. Not five minutes later, and he’s swaddled as tight as a giant orcish baby can be. 

“I hate you,” he tells her. “I hope I kill you tonight.”

She chokes out a laugh and pats him on the head. His scowl’s nearly swallowed by the greenery, but it warms her heart just to know she put it there. He rolls over, a little awkwardly, and she curls up next to him. The clouds lower and thicken, darkening the sky, and for a second, she can almost pretend it’s just another shitty night on the road, close her eyes and imagine her bed of vegetation is warm and dry, her friends safe and well-fed, the night ahead quiet and calm.

* * *

She dreams of drowning. Because of course she does.

It hits in flashes--jolts of panic in shutter-quick memories, the taste of whiskey in her mouth turning to cold water in her lungs. Her limbs grow long and strange, skinny and clawed and foreign. She swims and swims against the current, but these new limbs don’t work like her old ones, and her head never breaches the surface. She gets close, once, but something wrenches her back, pins her down beneath the waves. The thing wears Yeza’s face, wears Caleb’s, wears Fjord’s, but the eyes--vicious, yellow, and hungry--never change.

* * *

In the maybe-maybe-not-morning, she unwraps Fjord from his soggy salad bar of a bedroll. Birds cry in the canopy overhead, and dew hangs heavy on the grass. A cool breeze has settled in, stirring the mist that’s gathered around them. Nott’s breath clouds in the air, little puffs of heat to mark she’s still alive. It does nothing to dispel the sensation of water that still sits in her chest. 

Fjord looks a little better--the bruising having melted into a fine greenish-blue that almost seems to blend right in to the rest of him. They both stink something _fierce,_ and the growl of her stomach is nearly thunderous, but they’re still standing, so that’s-- something. 

“Jester’s going to eat you up when we get back,” she says, eyeing him over. “ _Oh, Fjord, you’re so strong and brave,_ ” she croons, in a badly-accented falsetto. “ _Lay your head upon my bosom while I cure your wounds.”_

It doesn’t get the laugh she was hoping for, but there’s a flicker of a smile. “She doesn’t sound like that.”

“ _Oh!”_ she gasps, and clutches her chest. “ _Your muscles are so big!_ _Pose for me while I sketch them!”_

He ducks his head--and there it is, that familiar huff of laughter. She grins, “Admit it, that was pretty good.”

“That was awful.”

“Oh, come on. _You_ give it a shot, Oh Mighty Accent King.”

The smile drops off his face like a bird shot down, eyes low, and Nott gets the distinct impression of having stepped straight onto a turd. “We should focus,” Fjord says at length. “We should-- make a plan.”

“Right,” she sighs, and drops down beside him. “A plan.”

For a moment, neither speak. Fjord sits with his knees pulled to his chest, arms folded and gaze heavy out over the misty woods. She doesn't even have it in her to make fun of his brooding, she just-- waits him out.

“You should let him take me," he says, like she knew he would.

“Yeah,” she says, and hates it. 

“And we can-- Hell, I don’t know, we can at least _see_ what he wants.”

“You are _not_ eating any more balls.”

He shrugs. “If I do, he might let us leave.”

“If you do,” she counters, “you might become his permanent ball-holding puppet. Is that what you want? To be that thing’s personal ball-holder? His personal jockstrap?”

“What I _want_ is to get us the fuck out of here,” he snaps. “What I _want_ is for you not be stuck here _because of me._ ” The words ring out into the silence, all ragged breath and desperation. 

“Okay,” Nott says at last, and it tastes like defeat. “We’ll do it your way.”

* * *

It goes like this.

Nott stands with her crossbow leveled, Fjord facing her from ten feet back. The river’s behind him--no way she’s putting herself between him and that thing again--the rushing water a measured backdrop to the hard beat of her heart.

“Ready?” he asks, and if she weren’t so fucking pissed, she’d be impressed. He really is a great liar. Doesn’t look half as terrified as he should.

“Ready.”

The falchion appears in his hand without fanfare, the yellow glow of its hilt a blur as it settles into existence, blade glistening wet. Fjord shivers before his face falls slack, eyes of that same yellow growing distant. For a long moment, he just stands there, head slightly cocked. Then he turns, that dead-eyed gaze sailing over her and into the woods.

He begins to walk.

Nott gives him a ten second head-start, then follows, finger still tight around the trigger. He moves with that same, graceless stagger, a slight sway to each step, like a sailor re-gaining their sealegs. Her skin crawls at the sight, the semi-familiarity of a body she knows but a person she doesn’t. Gross. This whole thing is gross. 

Gods, she hates that fucking squid.

He takes her upstream, following the river around that wide bend where she’d first woken up, and onwards into uncharted territory. She keeps close, eyes sharp, memorizing her way in case they need to retrace their steps later. Her eyes land on the water, and for a second, spin with vertigo. She squints, and double checks if they really _are_ going upstream. Was it always flowing this direction?

There’s no time to ponder. Fjord makes a sudden turn, stumbling under his own weight as though he’s being pulled along by a string. She curses and swerves after him, picking up pace to match. Another few dozen yards, and her breath starts coming short. The bastard’s really cruising.

Another turn and the river comes back into view. Nott’s stomach swoops with that same _not-quite-right_ familiarity, but for a different reason now. Did they get turned around? She could have _sworn_ it was flowing the opposite way yesterday. It’s calmer too, where before it was a torrent, surface just barely rippling with the current, rocks dotting the water where before they were submerged under the white rapids.

It roots in her, a weight like iron, seizing her in place. Fjord continues on without her, and she should go, she should keep close, but--

But it wasn’t going this way before. She _knows_ it.

“Fjord!” she shouts, and springs after him with renewed fervour. “Wait!”

Because if the river’s changed direction, then maybe the _portal_ has too. 

Nott whirls around, races after him, tracking the underbrush crushed by his heavy footfalls, shouts and shouts and doesn’t care if she attracts all the elementals in the world. They are getting the _fuck_ out of here.

She’s catches sight of him, a blur of green and grey--and gods, he is _booking_ it now--when he disappears again just as quickly, ducking around a boulder and out of sight. And it’s only then that she notices where he’s taken her.

The dark, howling entrance of a cave.

“Fuckity fuckity fuck,” she curses, trips on loose rock and dirt, and skids down after him.

The change is immediate--air stagnant and damp, sharp with the scent of iron and mould. There’s a faint breeze from somewhere deep within, echoing with the distant _plink_ of dripping water. Moss squelches underfoot, sinking deeper with each step as she scrambles desperately forward. There’s a steep drop before the cavern floor levels out, nearly fifteen feet straight, and as she races to the edge she can already see him down there, up to his knees in dark, brackish water.

“Fjord!” 

He freezes, turns, two yellow eyes piercing the dark. 

Behind him, a second pair of eyes blink open.

Nott doesn’t even have time to shriek--Fjord whirls around with unnatural speed, falchion carving through the air. The creature ducks, seems to collapse back into the water, which bubbles and roils and spits it back out some five feet away, and Nott can see it now, can feel the creeping horror of recognition, old folklore and nightmare-inducing bedtime stories-- _Forget about the goblins, Veth, what you really want to avoid are the hags--_ a humanoid body and face, emaciated and gray as a corpse, vicious claws and pointed teeth, lips peeled back in a wicked, ravenous grin. 

They are so fucking dead.

She’s frozen, gutted with terror like ice in her limbs, the jackrabbit beat of her heart the only part of her that even seems capable of movement. The hag cackles, circling him, tauntingly, and Fjord’s eyes track her, an equally terrifying glow, reflected in the ripples around them. 

“Come for your prize, little snake?” the hag coos, and even her _voice_ sends an itch under Nott’s skin. She drafts soundlessly over the water, hands outstretched--for a second, Nott thinks, to attack--but she only caresses his jaw, claws dragging lightly across the skin, the bruise that Nott left there. She hums, the echoes melodious, _charming,_ and Nott feels sick with dread as Fjord seems to relax beneath the touch.

Until he stabs her through the chest.

The hag spasms, shrieks, claws lashing, drawing blood, but it’s like he can’t even feel it. He steps closer, pushing the blade almost to the hilt, then wrenches it back in the same breath. Inky blood sprays out in an arc, clouding the water, as the hag collapses, sinking beneath it.

Hisses and cries echo between the walls, flashes of movement in the corners of Nott’s vision, because of course, of _fucking_ course, these things can never just come in _ones,_ can they?

Three more figures slither from the water, jaws open, hands grasping. Fjord cuts down the first, spins and slices at the second, more focused than she’s ever seen him, but another rises from where the first fell, and another after that, faster than she can track. One of them makes a lunge for Fjord's exposed back, and Nott finally, _finally_ wills herself into motion, aims and shoots and catches the hag right in the eye. It screams as it falls back, and more of those eyes lock on to her, begin to crawl towards her.

She drops the bow, empty now, hefts her shortsword instead and manages a good hit at the first, but there’s another right on it heels, wrapping slimey, wrinkled hands around her throat, dragging her down. They tumble off the ledge together, land in the water with Nott face-down, the weight of the hag on her back, pinning her beneath, and she can’t see, she can’t _breathe,_ and Fjord’s fucking possessed, and she’s going to fucking _die_ here.

She summons the last sliver of air in her lungs and heaves, arms trembling with the weight as she forces her head up out of the water, gulping down a desperate breath. She collapses just as quickly, sinking her head beneath the water and twisting, arms coming up around the hag to drag them both down together. It’s only a few feet, but it’s just enough water to take the weight off her ribs. At last, she snakes a hand between them, and plunges the sword up into the hag’s chest.

The hag convulses, claws retracting from Nott’s flesh, who kicks out, knocking herself loose. There’s no _question_ they’re gonna lose this fight, otherworldly possession or no. Fjord’s still chopping away like he doesn’t have a care in the world, like the claws and teeth slicing into his flesh at every turn mean _nothing_ to him, and why _would_ they? It’s not even really _him_ fighting.

She shakes loose of the moss and seaweed, casts one final look at her friend-turned-one-man-army, swallows her cowardice, and _books it_ in the opposite direction.

She can’t help him alone. But maybe she doesn’t have to.

It’s a mad scramble back up the ledge, and a godsdamned miracle she doesn’t fall and impale herself on the claws still tearing at her bloodied feet. At the cavern’s entrance, the once-murky light seems nearly blinding, and it’s through blurred vision she stumbles back out, the echoes of the battle still raging behind her chasing her through the white static of panic. 

She sprints back through the forest so fast her feet hardly seem to touch the ground, nothing but an empty crossbow and a desperate hope to hold onto, wildly retracing their steps until she finally spots it, that godsdamned motherfucking _piece of shit_ river. It’s moving even slower than before, just like it was last night, right before it must have changed direction, because of course, _of course,_ twelve hours apart, like tides, _fucking Plane of Water,_ pushing and pulling, highs and low, and _gods_ does she hope she’s right.

She sails straight into the water, a reckless plunge, a leap of faith, lets herself sink, holds her breath and fucking _prays._ Her lungs burn, legs flailing instinctively as memory overtakes her, twisting and writing, a sickening lurch in the pit of her stomach, but there’s nothing holding her down this time, and as her head crests the surface and air spills into her lungs, her vision floods with light.

Real, honest to gods, _daylight._

“Caleb!” she shrieks with her first breath, throwing herself like a dead weight onto the bank. “Jester! Beau!” Her voice shakes, arms trembling as she wrenches herself further up the grass, and then, loudest of all, “Help!”

“Nott!” Caleb’s voice cracks through the air like a whip, distant, but present. Here. He’s _here._

Her ears _pop_ with the familiar sensation of receiving _Message,_ the first few words nothing but garbled Zemnian until, very low and very fast, “Where are you and who do I need to kill?”

“The river,” she gasps, and laughs, delirious with relief. Gods, would she love to kill that river.

There’s a beat. “Do not move.”

She struggles to her feet anyway, stumbles downstream--or is it upstream now?--back towards the clearing where they’d made camp. Behind her, the river is all but stagnant, just the last few trickles of a current left. Ahead, the foliage bends and snaps under a stampede of feet, and she adjusts course, calling out, “Over here!”

Beau’s the first to break the treeline, eyes wild and dark, chest heaving and thunderous with rage. “What the _fuck,_ Nott?”

She can’t help it--the laughter bubbles out of her again. Her knees go wobbly--like those first few days, when her body wouldn’t respond right, when the limbs were too long and too skinny and too _green_ and she kept tripping over herself, her words, her _name._ She hits the sand, still laughing. 

More figures stumble from the treeline, voices loud loud loud. Hands grab at her chin, force her head up to meet fiery eyes, haloed in fury. “Nott,” Caleb says. “What happened?”

“Where’s Fjord?” Jester’s voice, from behind him, that quiet-scared tremble, and, _Where’s Molly? Is he waiting upstairs?_

“No, no, he’s alive,” she tells her, because they aren’t doing this again, they _aren’t._ “This time he’s alive.”

“Nott,” Caleb says, forcing her back, back here, with them, yes, yes, she’s with them. “Explain. Now, please.”

“River’s a portal,” she says. “The sword made him go in it. I had to beat him up, like, a _hundred_ times, he is honestly _so_ weak, you guys.” She sways, dizzy, lightened to have finally gotten the words out. The others appear unenlightened.

“Hang on,” comes Caduceus’s low voice. Warm hands, the scent of moss and rich earth flooding through her. It hurts, for just a second, like the sting of setting a broken bone, before the numbness in her limbs and the white noise in her head fall quiet, giving way to a cold, sharp clarity. 

She surges to her feet so sudden the others start back. “River’s a portal. Fjord’s possessed. Also, hags.” And really, she can’t make it any clearer than that.

“Uh, Deuce, I’m not sure that Cure was enough,” Beau says.

She bats Caduceus’ hands away. “We gotta get in the river.”

“Because it’s a portal? And Fjord’s on the other side?” Jester says, hopeful and pained and _gloriously_ quick on the uptake.

“Yes, yes! I know it sounds crazy--”

“Honestly, the shit we’ve seen? Not even that high up the list.” Beau sizes up the river, widens her stance and readies a running jump. “Let’s do this.”

“Not yet!” Nott leaps in front of her, eyes the water over her shoulder, appraisingly. “We have to wait.”

“...Okay. _Now_ it’s starting to sound a little crazy.”

“It’ll change in a second!” And it’s almost there too, the water so still now it’s nearly as clear as glass. Any second now, the tides with shift, the pull will reverse. Any second.

“Nott…” Jester says.

“Just trust me!” She throws up a hand, like a marshal counting down the start of a race, grits her teeth and fucking _wills_ the thing to change. She swears if Fjord is dead before they even get there she’s going to _fucking kill him._

She waits. Waits. Keeps fucking waiting _godsdamnit--_

And _finally,_ the current begins to shift, begins to _change,_ a gentle trickle that stirs the sand at the base of the riverbed, ripples the surface in low waves.

“Now!” Nott’s off like the shot, diving straight down. She hears the crash of other bodies hitting the water, squeezes her eyes shut as they sink, and sink, and _please please please_ let this be enough.

Her chest begins to ache with the strain of her breath, summoning her back up, where she crests the surface to meet hot, damp air, a thick canopy, and faint, murky light. The surface ripples as more heads breach, gasping for air.

“Nott?” Caleb says, and there’s a heavy weight to the word. He blinks water from his eyes, bright with something between reverence and incredulity as he treads water next to her. Treads _water,_ next to _her._

“I know, I know.” Because yeah, exposure therapy aside, really, they do _not_ have the time. She kicks for the riverbank and drags herself to her feet. “Come on!”

Caleb follows, panting, robes sopping wet. He plants a hand on her shoulder as he stands, familiar and warm, grounding. The others join them, grim with determination. Beau, furious. Jester, resolute. Caduceus-- Caduceus-y.

“Let’s get our warlock,” Caleb says.


	4. Chapter 4

The forest races past, a blur of green and gray, Nott’s head bent low, cold and focused under the fury of adrenaline. The others follow close, their footsteps a familiar thunder beneath the staccato of her heart. 

They can already hear the screams. 

They howl up from the cave, a mournful echo of chittering voices that grow in volume and frenzy, piercing the air like an alarm, silencing the canopy above. 

Beau’s the first in, not a moment of thought spared, with Jester on her heels, that giant, razor-sharp confection already aloft. Globules of light sail overhead, a golden glow that illuminates the cavern’s entrance, the steep drop, the pool of water lapping at its base, already dark with blood, and in the center of it all, an image that cuts straight through Nott’s heart.

Fjord’s on his knees, surrounded, those clawed, corpse-like limbs wrapped around him like the roots of a tree, weighing him down. One hag pins his arm to his side, the falchion half-submerged in the water. Another rakes her hands through his hair, jerks back to expose the vulnerable flesh of his throat. 

Another crouches before him, where his armor’s been torn open, revealing the dull, pallid glow of his stomach. She cackles as she digs her claws into the flesh, pulsing with blood as she gouges deeper and deeper, seeking out that glow as if to wrench it from his body. 

Fjord doesn’t struggle, doesn’t even scream--just watches. And _smiles._

The water surges and _erupts,_ swallowing the figures in its center in a wave so massive it sends Beau flying and Caleb’s lights scattering through the air. They spin, flashing the walls of the cavern in dizzying reflections, drawing long, terrifying shadows upon the enormous, hulking, serpent-like figure which now stands guard over Fjord.

It swoops down, jaws open to crush the nearest hag. She shrieks as it swallows her, tearing her from Fjord with a spray of gore, before it seems to melt back into the floor, slithering beneath the water. 

Beau clambers to her feet and stumbles through the pool to Fjord’s side. “What the fuck was that?”

He gives no sign that he recognizes her, that he even realizes she’s there. He stands, wound still gaping, and slashes at the last hag remaining before him. But more are beginning to slink out of the shadows now, and more cries still rising from deeper through the cavern, encircling them. 

A blast of radiant energy from Jester draws the attention of the first, a punch from Beau striking the second. Caduceus slams his staff into the ground and three of the hags stumble, alight with the familiar glow of _Bane._ Beside her--the crackle and warmth of Caleb’s fingers sparking with fire.

And Nott doesn’t move an inch. 

Her eyes track the movement beneath Fjord’s feet, the ripples of the serpent that circles him, guarding. Not quite tangible--more like shadows swirling beneath the surface, the occasional flicker of yellow. It seems to _be_ the water itself, dark and unfathomable, but unmistakably _alive._

It rears up as another hag slips past Beau’s reach, dragging her down into the water, pinning her with an invisible weight as she struggles, and Fjord turns in tandem, buries the blade in her neck.

As he moves, she spots that glow again--not coming from either him or the snake this time, but rather, somewhere behind him, embedded in the rocks beneath the water. In the center of the cavern floor, where the pool is deepest, past the tendrils of seaweed and blood. There’s something glowing. Something small and round. 

_He wanted me to find something,_ Fjord had said. _He wanted me to consume._

Yeah. No fucking chance.

She leaps into a run, ducks beneath Caleb’s arm and lands in the water. A hag makes a grab for her that she doesn’t even bother parrying--she rolls out of reach and dives deeper, closer, as close to Fjord as she dares.

A flash of yellow--Nott stabs her blade and the water _dips_ around it. “Mother _fucker._ ” She stabs again--meets empty air. Fjord’s eyes flicker to the movement. 

Another hag catches him before he can attack--the same one Nott dodged earlier. It tears at his face, and the water roils around him, that shadowy serpent rising to his aid.

Nott stabs it in the back of the fucking head.

Fjord stumbles as though it’s _him_ she’s struck, a cry torn from his chest--the first sound she’s heard him make since Snake’otoa took up residence in his head. The hag closes in, rakes her claws across his eyes, and he falls to his knees at the same time as the wounded serpent collapses back into the water, her shortsword sinking with it.

Nott’s weaponless now, only an empty crossbow in hand, and can do nothing but stumble back, ears ringing with Fjord’s cries. Beau shouts and wrenches him free, but it’s _bad._ He stumbles, and Nott starts back towards him instinctively.

She doesn’t see his blade until it carves across her chest.

Fjord pushes off of Beau and arcs the sword up in a second swipe, a jolt of sharp, electric pain that steals the breath from her lungs as she goes careening back into dark waters. One of the others shouts--she isn’t sure who--and it’s swallowed in the rush of the water crashing overhead, rising and rising, unnaturally tall, flickering with movement, with deep, glowing eyes.

And beyond it, already now standing at the edge of the pit in the center of the cavern, is Fjord. He stares down into it through eyes still weeping blood, distorted behind the ripples, lit from beneath in that terrible, brilliant yellow. It glistens on his skin, in the black blood of his wounds.

Something knocks into Nott, floating face down in the water beside her. A corpse--the hag she shot before she fled. It turns, slowly, a splintered crossbow bolt embedded in its eye. 

She wrenches it free, loads. Fjord bends his knees, preparing for the dive. 

She levels the shot. Initial panic absent, she feels a glacial calm, a reckless determination. Her hands are steady.

And the water surges up around her, tighter, higher, guarding. Exactly like she knew it would.

Within the wall, the serpent floats, glowing eyes depthless and unfathomable. Nott has the keen sensation that the ocean itself has turned its gaze upon her.

 _“Potential,”_ it hisses. 

“Fuck off,” Nott says, and fires the bolt directly into Uk’otoa’s giant, ugly eyeball.

* * *

When he opens his eyes, the sky above is cloudless and ocean-blue. A warm breeze stirs his hair, carries the scent of smoke and roasted meats, the low murmur of voices from somewhere nearby.

“Hey,” Nott says, as her face blots out that sky, inches from his own. “You up?”

Fjord _doesn’t_ shout. It’s more a-- wordless noise of surprise. A greeting. 

“‘Kay, cool. Don’t barf again,” Nott says, then glances over her shoulder. “He’s up!”

Fjord tries to sit up, cranes his head to look, but-- “Did you tie me up?”

“Duh,” Nott says. She rips a chunk of blackened meat off a kabob, and with her mouth full, “We’re not stupid.”

He struggles up. Blankets slide off his shoulders, pool in his lap. He’s shirtless, the skin of his abdomen smooth, but tight with the phantom of pain. He aches all over, but it’s a clean ache. A good ache, almost. Like that time Beau dragged him into her morning workout. There’s a lingering sweetness on the back of his tongue, breath cool and minty in that way that whispers of Jester’s touch. 

The tips of his fingers have gone dark with lack of blood flow. He thinks he preferred the vines. “Fuck, these are tight.”

“Yeah, that’ll be me. We weren’t taking any chances, man,” says Beau, coming to crouch in front of him. She peers into his eyes like she’s studying a particularly vexing tome. “Caleb, what do you think?”

“He looks fine to me!” Caduceus calls pleasently, not even bothering to stand from where he’s tending the campfire. 

Caleb gives it a little more consideration, flicking his fingers in that pattern Fjord’s come to recognize as _Detect Magic._ “Ja, it seems like him.”

“It’s him, it’s him,” Nott waves them away, still chewing. “He’s not sneaky about it like that. You could always tell when it was Snake O’clock.”

He feels the flush of embarrassment creep up his neck. He wishes he hadn’t knocked the blankets off, maybe. That they could stop him from sitting here looking like a horse being appraised. Not that he _blames_ them, gods. It’s just--

They had to come save him. _Again._

Nott unties his wrists. He ducks his head in wordless thanks, not quite trusting himself to speak yet. He busies himself rubbing sensation back into his arms, skin cold with the memory of the familiar weight of the falchion, of his fingers around Nott’s throat. 

“So, what the fuck was all that?” Beau asks. 

Fjord shakes his head. The rushing white water, the cold weight of Uk’otoa behind his eyes. _Find. Consume. Reward._ A clawed hand digging through his skin, through his stomach, and he couldn’t even _scream._ “I-- He wanted me-- I couldn’t--”

“Fjord, your patron _sucks,_ ” Jester says, and flops down on the grass beside him. “You should seriously just, like, worship the Traveller instead. He’s never made _me_ eat any balls.”

Caduceus taps his chin. “That’s actually not a terrible idea.”

“You could… borrow some of my books, if you’d like,” Caleb shrugs. 

“Yeah, and like, we can work out again, but only if you don’t complain as much as last time,” Beau adds.

Fjord bows his head, breath coming just a little easier. “Thanks, guys,” he says weakly. “I’ll-- I’ll think about it.”

“Well, you’re gonna have to do _something,”_ Nott says. “Because we seriously kicked the shit out of that thing, so he’s probably pretty pissed.”

He lifts his eyes. “You did?”

“Yep. You were unconscious the whole time. _Pretty_ embarrassing.”

Jester rolls over and sticks out her tongue. “Don’t be mean, Nott.” She pats his arm. “You were very brave.”

Nott shoots him a _look_ , mouths, _Your muscles are so big._

A sharp breath escapes him, a laugh so small it could hardly be called one, but Nott’s eyes light up at the sight. She makes a kissy face, and he laughs harder, for real this time. 

She’d been trying to get him to laugh that whole time. Gods know where she found the energy, between saving his ass every three seconds. And all he’d done in thanks was try to kill her.

“Gods,” he breathes. “Nott, I am _so--_ ”

“Hey!” she snaps. Actually snaps. Fingers in his face. “What did I say? I don’t wanna hear it.” And then, softer, just between them, “No hard feelings, okay?”

Fjord has some pretty fucking hard feelings about it, but he sees the words for what they are. An olive branch, an out. Too big, too impossible to refuse. “Thank you,” he says instead. 

Nott smiles. Clear skies above, not a drop of rain in sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> This has been a really fun foray into this fandom and a lovely break from some of the longer projects I've been working on. Your kudos and comments are forever appreciated!


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